Bluesfest Executive Director takes fight against transit levy to Transit Commission
Posted Dec 3, 2015 02:30:29 PM.
Last Updated Dec 4, 2015 04:29:36 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Part of City Council’s vote on the 2016 budget next week will include a proposal to collect $200,000 dollars from Bluesfest to help cover the cost for extra bus service during next year’s festival.
Now, the Executive Director of Bluesfest has taken his argument against that to the Transit Commission.
There’s a bylaw that lets the City recover costs for special events, and that’s what they’ve decided to do in the case of extra bus service for Bluesfest.
Bluesfest Executive Director Mark Monahan says he’s not sure where that money would come from.
“These things all have to come from somewhere, and if we could charge more for services or tickets, we probably would look at that,” Monahan said Thursday. “But it’s a very price-sensitive market. We’re also a charity, trying to deliver a youth pass for … $10 dollars a day. There’s very little room in that to have a fee for the bus.”
“It would be very challenging for us to say yes, there’s $200 thousand sitting here, without taking it from an artistic budget or local initiatives.”
The head of OC Transpo, John Manconi, says building transit costs into event tickets does work, citing other examples in the city.
“What the folks at Lansdowne have seen, and the City Folk festival’s the same thing, it’s when you tell people that you have transit service to your event three hours before our three hours after, or whatever the parameters are, it simplifies that experience,” said Manconi after the Transit Commission meeting.
Transit Commission chair Councillor Stephen Blais says he believes Bluesfest can come up with the money. “Bluesfest is a multi-million dollar festival that has Hollywood A-list acts, and it’s not clear to me that Kanye West and Iggy Azalea need a subsidy to play in Ottawa.”
